In fact, less than one percent of ideas launched by big companies end up having real impact. The ideas aren’t the problem. It’s the process.The First Mile focuses on the critical moment when an innovator moves from planning to reality. It is a perilous place where hidden traps snare entrepreneurs and roadblocks slow innovators inside large companies.In this practical and enlightening manual, strategic adviser Scott Anthony equips innovators with new tools, questions, and examples to speed through this crucial early stage of innovation. You’ll learn:• How to evaluate your idea’s strengths and weaknesses using the “DEFT” process—Document, Evaluate, Focus, and Test• Fourteen recipes from an “experiment cookbook” to gain confidence in your idea or business• Why “spinouts,” “wrong turns,” and other challenges commonly trip up innovation—and the practical strategies you can use to avoid them• Why innovators need to seek chaos in an age of constant change—and other essential leadership skillsDrawing on his decade of experience as an innovation adviser and investor, Anthony describes hard-won lessons from disruptive start-ups and global giants alike. The First Mile will give you the knowledge and confidence to travel this perilous—but ultimately promising—terrain.The first mile can be a scary place, but you don’t have to traverse it alone. This book can help.

    A rich tapestry of anecdotes, object lessons, parodies, insights, and predictions, The Cluetrain Manifesto illustrates how the Internet has radically reframed the seemingly immutable laws of business--and what business needs to know to weather the seismic aftershocks.

    But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on "validated learning," rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs - in companies of all sizes - a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it's too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

    Customer experience is, quite simply, how your customers perceive their every interaction with your company. It’s a fundamental business driver. Here’s proof: over a recent five-year period during which the S&P 500 was flat, a stock portfolio of customer experience leaders grew twenty-two percent. In an age when customers have access to vast amounts of data about your company and its competitors, customer experience is the only sustainable source of competitive advantage. But how to excel at it? Based on fourteen years of research by the customer experience leaders at Forrester Research, Outside In offers a complete roadmap to attaining the experience advantage. It starts with the concept of the Customer Experience Ecosystem—proof that the roots of customer experience problems lie not just with customer-facing employees like your sales staff, but with behind-the-scenes employees like accountants, lawyers, and programmers, as well as the policies, processes, and technologies that all your employees use every day. Identifying and solving these problems has the potential to dramatically increase sales and decrease costs.

    You’ll learn…• How a noise reduction headset at 35,000 feet led to the creation of Pepsi’s new trademarked signature sound.• How a worn down sneaker discovered in the home of an 11-year-old German boy led to LEGO’s incredible turnaround.• How a magnet found on a fridge in Siberia resulted in a U.S. supermarket revolution.• How a toy stuffed bear in a girl’s bedroom helped revolutionize a fashion retailer’s 1,000 stores in 20 different countries.• How an ordinary bracelet helped Jenny Craig increase customer loyalty by 159% in less than a year.• How the ergonomic layout of a car dashboard led to the redesign of the Roomba vacuum.

    Remarkably, fifty years ago that's the way it was. Businesses made plans, certainly, but without understanding the underlying dynamics of competition, costs, and customers. It was like trying to design a large-scale engineering project without knowing the laws of physics. But in the 1960s, four mavericks and their posses instigated a profound shift in thinking that turbocharged business as never before, with implications far beyond what even they imagined. In The Lords of Strategy, renowned business journalist and editor Walter Kiechel tells, for the first time, the story of the four men who invented corporate strategy as we know it and set in motion the modern, multibillion-dollar consulting industry:Bruce Henderson, founder of Boston Consulting GroupBill Bain, creator of Bain & CompanyFred Gluck, longtime Managing Director of McKinsey & CompanyMichael Porter, Harvard Business School professorProviding a window into how to think about strategy today, Kiechel tells their story with novelistic flair. At times inspiring, at times nearly terrifying, this book is a revealing account of how these iconoclasts and the organizations they led revolutionized the way we think about business, changed the very soul of the corporation, and transformed the way we work.

    Who are these people, what motivates them, and why should you care?Consider these facts: Everything around us is turning into computers. Your typewriter is gone, replaced by a computer. Your phone has turned into a computer. So has your camera. Soon your TV will. Your car was not only designed on computers, but has more processing power in it than a room-sized mainframe did in 1970. Letters, encyclopedias, newspapers, and even your local store are being replaced by the Internet.Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age, by Paul Graham, explains this world and the motivations of the people who occupy it. In clear, thoughtful prose that draws on illuminating historical examples, Graham takes readers on an unflinching exploration into what he calls “an intellectual Wild West.”The ideas discussed in this book will have a powerful and lasting impact on how we think, how we work, how we develop technology, and how we live. Topics include the importance of beauty in software design, how to make wealth, heresy and free speech, the programming language renaissance, the open-source movement, digital design, internet startups, and more.

    Topics covered range from the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning, to a discussion of how to highlight the structure of information.

    Through consecutive “hook cycles,” these products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back again and again without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.Hooked is based on Eyal’s years of research, consulting, and practical experience. He wrote the book he wished had been available to him as a start-up founder—not abstract theory, but a how-to guide for building better products. Hooked is written for product managers, designers, marketers, start-up founders, and anyone who seeks to understand how products influence our behavior.Eyal provides readers with:• Practical insights to create user habits that stick.• Actionable steps for building products people love.• Fascinating examples from the iPhone to Twitter, Pinterest to the Bible App, and many other habit-forming products.

    Now, in the wake of the global financial crisis, the principles of wikinomics have become more powerful than ever. Many of the institutions that have served us well for decades or centuries seem stuck in the past and unable to move forward. And yet, in every corner of the globe, a powerful new model of economic and social innovation is sweeping across all sectors-one where people with drive, passion, and expertise take advantage of new Web-based tools to get more involved in making the world more prosperous, just, and sustainable. Tapscott and Williams show that in over a dozen fields-from finance to health care, science to education, the media to the environment-we have reached a historic turning point: cling to the old industrial-era paradigms or use collaborative innovation to revolutionize not only the way we work, but how we live, learn, create, govern, and care for one another. You'll meet innovators such as: * An Iraq veteran whose start-up car company is "staffed" by over 4,500 competing designers and supplied by microfactories around the world * A microlending community where 570,000 individuals help fund new ventures-from Angola to Vietnam * An online community for people with life-altering diseases that also serves as a large-scale research project * An astronomer who is mapping the universe with the help of 250,000 citizen scientists Tapscott and Williams once again use original research to provide vivid new examples of organizations that are successfully embracing the principles of wikinomics to change the world. Visit www.Macrowikinomics.com.

    This entertaining guide builds on scores of case studies taken from business, sports, the movies, politics, and gambling. It outlines the basics of good strategy making and then shows how you can apply them in any area of your life.

    Now, he shares the Apple CEO's most famous, most original, and most effective strategies for sparking true creativity--and real innovation--in any workplace.THE INNOVATION SECRETS OF STEVE JOBSLearn how to RETHINK your business, REINVENT your products, and REVITALIZE your vision of success--the Steve Jobs way.When it comes to innovation, Apple CEO Steve Jobs is legendary. His company slogan "Think Different" is more than a marketing tool. It's a way of life--a powerful, positive, game-changing approach to innovation that anyone can apply to any field of endeavor.These are the Seven Principles of Innovation, inspired by the master himself:Do What You Love. Think differently about your career. Put a Dent in the Universe. Think differently about your vision. Kick Start Your Brain. Think differently about how you think. Sell Dreams, Not Products. Think differently about your customers. Say No to 1,000 Things. Think differently about design. Create Insanely Great Experiences. Think differently about your brand experience. Master the Message. Think differently about your story. By following Steve Jobs's visionary example, you'll discover exciting new ways to unlock your creative potential and to foster an environment that encourages innovation and allows it to flourish. You'll learn how to match--and beat--the most powerful competitors, develop the most revolutionary products, attract the most loyal customers, and thrive in the most challenging times. Bestselling business journalist Carmine Gallo has interviewed hundreds of successful professionals--from CEOs, managers, and entrepreneurs to teachers, consultants, and stay-at-home moms--to get to the core of Steve Jobs's innovative philosophies. These are the simple, meaningful, and attainable principles that drive us all to "Think Different." These are The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs.An enhanced ebook is now available with 10 demonstration videos of Jobs' sure-fire innovation secrets. Select the Kindle Edition with Audio/Video from the available formats.

    Creative Selection recounts the life of one of the few who worked behind the scenes, a highly-respected software engineer who worked in the final years the Steve Jobs era--the Golden Age of Apple.Ken Kocienda offers an inside look at Apple's creative process. For fifteen years, he was on the ground floor of the company as a specialist, directly responsible for experimenting with novel user interface concepts and writing powerful, easy-to-use software for products including the iPhone, the iPad, and the Safari web browser. His stories explain the symbiotic relationship between software and product development for those who have never dreamed of programming a computer, and reveal what it was like to work on the cutting edge of technology at one of the world's most admired companies.Kocienda shares moments of struggle and success, crisis and collaboration, illuminating each with lessons learned over his Apple career. He introduces the essential elements of innovation--inspiration, collaboration, craft, diligence, decisiveness, taste, and empathy--and uses these as a lens through which to understand productive work culture.An insider's tale of creativity and innovation at Apple, Creative Selection shows readers how a small group of people developed an evolutionary design model, and how they used this methodology to make groundbreaking and intuitive software which countless millions use every day.

    Strategy and innovation expert, Max McKeown, draws on millions of years of evolution to create a practical and strategic set of rules which take adaption from an involuntary coping strategy to a deliberate winning strategy.To show how adaptability works McKeown looks at a rich set of examples, problems and situations. He includes the 15-year old geneticist working from his basement, and the Italian town that said no to seemingly inevitable change. Along the way, he visits the adaptation of Western technology to the social structures of sub-Saharan Africa and explores how quantum games may solve the world's trickiest problems. He looks inside global corporations like Starbucks, Netflix and McDonald's to see how they flirt with extinction, create internal barriers to adaptation, and adapt to transcend their situation.Adaptability proves that innovation is important but not enough. Strategy, branding, marketing and operations are all useful, but insufficient. And highlights that the ability to adapt smarter and faster than the situation changes is what makes the powerful difference between adapting to cope and adapting to win.

    The question is how. Companies need a playbook; a process by which they can start the process of transforming their organizations into innovation engines. The Corporate Startup is that playbook. It provides a proven methodology —applying Lean Startup principles and more— for building a culture of innovation. Ben Yoskovitz, Co-Author of Lean Analytics and Founding Partner at Highline BETA. The Corporate Startup is a practical guide for established companies that aspire to develop and sustain their innovation capabilities. • The world around us is changing rapidly. There is now more pressure on established companies to innovate. • The challenge most companies face is how to develop new products for new markets, while managing their core business at the same time. • The principles and practices outlined in this book provide companies with a blueprint of how to manage innovation while they execute on their core business. • The Corporate Startup provides frameworks, visualizations, templates, tools and methods that can be easily applied to develop new products and business models. We have found The Corporate Startup model and the thoughts on the innovation ecosystem very useful in designing our innovation strategy. This book is a must read for all corporate leaders that want to transform their companies to be more innovative. Erik Kongsvik-Ibsen, Vice President of Strategy and Business Development at Egmont. This book is a timely addition to the corporate innovation space. It is a must read for anyone working on innovation in medium-size and large companies. The principles and practices, if well implemented, can save a company from the disruption death march. Tim Deeson, Managing Director at Deeson Group.